Renowned American media special article for the Albanian secret police: How State Security Was Organized and Works

Not long after he was arrested, the secret police offered Max Velos a deal. Cooperate with us, they told him, and we can leave all of this.

It was 1978, of Albania's dictatorship.

But this “was something I couldn't do”, he remembers.

Velos, a painter, you were told that his art was anti-Socialist, expressing “theist modernization”.

He was interrogated for six months, and he shows that he had been kept in solitary confinement and was chained. Velo later went to trial and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he was forced to do hard work for the Soviet-style <x0).

Velo was assigned to work in the copper mines and spent the majority, 7 years, 3 months and 10 days behind bars along with other political prisoners in Spac Prison, part of a network built to reflect Stalin's guugla.

For the past four decades, Velo has been asked whether he ended up in Spac, why someone he knew received an agreement like what was offered and gave information to authorities. He even imagined what such a person could have said.

Last year, the Albanian government opened its old secret police archives, Security. Anyone who has been spying during the communist era may have access to his (or her) file, allowing those who collaborated with the regime to be potentially identified.

Velo looked for his file, and was recognized through it. Where he started reading it, he had to leave a page halfway... He learned that about 20 people who had informed of him were close friends, where his former mother - in - law was not missing.

“Max Velo is a person of bourgean beliefs”, she wrote in a report to the secret police, according to the file.

He's a character-free man”.

“Things they should pardon”

Most other former communist countries opened Cold War-era files a long time ago.

But, unlike many of its neighbours, Albania never carried out a “mutation policy”: a systematic cleansing of government officials who had participated in crimes during the communist era.

Today, Security files fill a series of small rooms in a government depot at the ends of Tirana. With files filled with metal shelves and boxes piled on the ground and windows, it is difficult to say exactly how complete the meeting is. Security agents are thought to have destroyed thousands of files during the recent years of the regime.

“Every day people come here, usually with questions that have not been answered for a long time”, says Gentina Sula, director of the Agency offering access to files.

If there are things to forgive, for themselves or for their parents, I think this is a good chance. Very often, an associate and a victim were in the same direction as”.

Soula's grandfather was among the Albanians who disappeared from government agents during the dictatorship. Almost three decades later, about 4,000 people are still listed as missing.

The Balkan nation of about 3 million people once was home to one of the most brutal regimes in the world. Some experts have compared communist-era Albania to North Korea because its borders were sealed with electric fences, and Albanians were executed for efforts to escape.

Dicker Enver Hoxha came to power at the end of World War II and served as head of state until his death in 1985. Known to be paranoid, he set up thousands of concrete bunkers to protect against a foreign invasion that never came.

Under Hoxha's leadership, religion, long hair, foreign language, and private cars were banned, as was criticism of the regime. If a person was judged an opponent, the whole family could be sent to work in factories or remote fields.

From 1946 to 1991, about 6,000 people were executed, according to the Albanian Association of Political Prisoners. Tens of thousands were imprisoned or sent to labor camps for political charges.

The secret police force was very efficient.

Security agents were sometimes called living “microphones”, because they always listened. But that reputation was defeated by thousands of ordinary Albanians who helped them, working as official collaborators, and thousands of others who functioned as informal informers, offering intimate secrets about those they knew. The communist camera machine relied on “network crash” of compromised people.

While the dictatorship was destroyed in the early 1990s, most security agents were considered anonymous.

A former official, Nesti Vako, agreed to speak with NBC Nesa at a cafe in central Tirana.

“As the operational chief of Insurance, I have produced any technology that was needed”, said Vako, who spent 25 years as chief engineer. Vaako says security agents had been tracking the entire country, with hearing equipment in cafes, offices and all foreign embassies.

If security was intended for a woman, agents could study her shoes and then make a pair of copies with a bug on the heel and then change without noticing. Vaako says he was once sent to China to study surveillance techniques.

I loved it “, says Vaako, about his role.

I feel very proud of my work... I've been lucky to have done this job, I only implemented the” law.

Asked what he thought about publishing the security files, Vaako shook his head.

Look, the file opening, in my personal opinion, is complicated. It's not good”, he said.

The reason is that if you look at the files, there are times when a brother ratted out his brother”.

Patriot or traitor?

Velo's Security File is 250 pages and he's been through it for months to figure it out. Co-workers have been given codes, so Velo has had work to return “subversation” of evidence by thinking again a story long ago, to understand who can refer to nicknames.

His friend's co-operation, mostly shocks 83-year-old Velon. The man was a painter, someone Velo invited to his house. When Velo was arrested, authorities claimed his works were hostile and burned many of his paintings.

“How could I have imagined that the discussion of art works is a criminal offence?”, he said.

After receiving his file, Velo learned that his friend was still alive and lived in Tirana, but he did not try to meet him.

Soula, the official responsible for the Security Archives, said she is concerned that people living in Albania today will not understand the context in which elections were made, or not made, under dictatorship. Her agency has received hundreds of file requests.

“was a hostage-received society”, she says.

“There was a lot of propaganda”.

She said many associates believed they were “serving their country” and there were <x2patriotic”, while others were forced.

How do you think Sula's former associates should be treated today?

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No, I wouldn't say sympathy. But I'm asking people to do deep analysis”.

For his part, Velo says he does not regret reading his file.

The American say, "Sorry, sorry 100 times a day." Here, nobody ever says, "I'm sorry," says Max Velo.